more beautiful than can be found in nature, so that artist who can
unite in himself the excellences of the various painters, will approach
nearer to perfection than any one of his masters.

He who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he never
proposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object of
imitation. He professes only to follow, and he that follows must
necessarily be behind.

We should imitate the conduct of the great artists in the course of their
studies, as well as the works which they produced, when they were
perfectly formed. Raffaelle began by imitating implicitly the manner of
Pietro Perugino, under whom he studied; so his first works are scarce to
be distinguished from his master's; but soon forming higher and more
extensive views, he imitated the grand outline of Michael Angelo. He
learnt the manner of using colours from the works of Leonardo da Vinci
and Fratre Bartolomeo: to all this he added the contemplation of all the
remains of antiquity that were within his reach, and employed others to
draw for him what was in Greece and distant places. And it is from his
having taken so many models that he became himself a model for all
succeeding painters, always imitating, and always original.

If your ambition therefore be to equal Raffaelle, you must do as
Raffaelle did; take many models, and not take even him for your guide
alone to the exclusion of others. And yet the number is infinite of
those who seem, if one may judge by their style, to have seen no other
works but those of their master, or of some favourite whose manner is
their first wish and their last.

I will mention a few that occur to me of this narrow, confined,
illiberal, unscientific, and servile kind of imitators. Guido was thus
meanly copied by Elizabetta Sirani, and Simone Cantarini; Poussin, by
Verdier and Cheron; Parmigiano, by Jeronimo Mazzuoli; Paolo Veronese and
Iacomo Bassan had for their imitators their brothers and sons; Pietro de
Cortona was followed by Ciro Ferri and Romanelli; Rubens, by Jacques
Jordans and Diepenbeck; Guercino, by his own family, the Gennari; Carlo
Marratti was imitated by Giuseppe Chiari and Pietro da Pietri; and
Rembrandt, by Bramer, Eckhout, and Flink. All these, to whom may be
added a much longer list of painters, whose works among the ignorant pass
for those of their masters, are justly to be censured for barrenness and
servility.

To oppose to this list a few that